Following
in the footsteps of a literary legend, 100 years later.
By David Espey

AROUND THE WORLD WITH MARK TWAINBy Robert Cooper WG58.New York: Arcade Publishing, Inc., 2000.420 pp., $27.95. Order
this book

When he was nearly 60 years old and bankrupt,
Mark Twain went on a yearlong lecturing tour around the world in 1895
to raise money to pay off his debts. Accompanied by his wife Olivia
and daughter Clara, he traveled across the northern United States, sailed
from Seattle to the South Seas, and worked his way through Australia
and New Zealand to India and South Africa before settling in England
to write Following the Equator, the book that recounted his travels.
In
a labor of love, Robert Cooper, a retired professor of sociology and
education at the Hebrew University, has followed the same path 100 years
later, adding a dimension to Twains book through his own travel impressions,
local press reviews of Twains performances and family archives. His
book is a kind of extended literary pilgrimage and a tribute to the
will, talent and spirit of Americas most famous 19th-century literary
personage. Old, broke, sick, and
depressed, Twain nevertheless managed to circumnavigate the globe,
pack houses and charm audiences from Auckland to Calcutta to Capetown.
Reporters followed in his wake, demanding countless interviews. Fortunately,
Twain was a master at handling the press, throwing them quotable phrases
at every turn. Despite the grueling circuit of lectures, he basically
liked performing. Audiences turned him on. Cooper
begins in Elmira, New York, where Twain wrote some of his best-known
works. Elmira, a booming and progressive industrial community in the
late 19th century, has fallen on hard times. (This chapter held special
interest for me, since I grew up in Elmira; I had the odd sensation
of seeing my hometown through the eyes of a travel writer.) Cooper strolls
around Elmira, evoking its heyday in the late 1890s, when Twain and
his family set out by train from the Erie station to begin his round-the
world tour in Cleveland (where Twains creditors threatened to seize
his luggage). Cooper
must drive across the Midwest and imagine what the journey would have
been like 100 years before. The Twains traveled by train and boat with
16 pieces of hand luggage and a multitude of vast steamer trunks,
to accommodate the many changes of clothing and formal attire necessitated
by Victorian custom. Twain
had a painful carbuncle on his leg which required constant treatment.
In the course of the journey, his family faced seasickness, stifling
heat, quarantines caused by cholera and smallpox, and cockroach-infested
sea vessels. He suffered frequent colds and hoarseness in the throat,
probably not helped by his daily cigars. (In a scholarly aside, Cooper
notes that Twains manuscripts still bear the odor of his cigars.) Despite
these obstacles, Twain wowed audiences in town after town. A master
of timing and delivery, he continually reworked his material, which
included the famous Golden Arm ghost story, a tongue-in-cheek disquisition
on morality and quotable epigrams which he often appeared to invent
on the spot. He could poke fun at pretensions of travel writing: You
know so much more of a country when you havent seen it than when you
have. Even
his interviews produced memorable ironies: Dont forget my soulful
eyes and deeply intelligent expression, he offered to one journalist
doing an article on him. In Sault Ste. Marie, a woman in the audience
suffered a heart attack, brought on perhaps, from compulsive laughing.
In Vancouver, the audience was convulsed at times to the point of incoherence.
In Christchurch, New Zealand, the audience serenaded him at the end
of his performance with a chorus of For Hes a Jolly Good Fellow.
Though Twain sometimes played to less than a full house, his agent more
often booked additional appearances to satisfy demand. For
Twain, perhaps the most traveled writer of his generation, there must
have been more than a bit of dÈjý vu in all of this. Many years before,
he had written the best-selling travel book of the century, Innocents
Abroad, and he had followed later with A Tramp Abroad. Yet
he was delighted by much that he experienced, especially in India. Father,
wrote [his daughter] Clara about Clemens in India, seemed like a young
boy in his enthusiasm over everything he saw. He kept reiterating: This
wonderful land, this marvelous land! There can be no other like it.
He loved the heat, the punkahs, the bungalows, and the continuous opportunity
to wear white clothes without attracting attention. Cooper
is affectionate and loyal towards his subject, defending Twain against
possible charges of racism and putting his ringing endorsement of the
British empire into the context of the times. Twain could criticize
imperialism as readily as he could praise it. Cooper quotes with satisfaction
Twains statement that There are many humorous things in the world,
among them the white mans notion that he is less savage than the savages.
Cooper knows that Twain
is a hard act to follow, so he keeps a low profile himself as a traveler
and focuses on the words and the impressions of his subject, one of
the best literary entertainers of all times. Occasionally, he underplays
his own adventures. While he and his wife were writing postcards in
a Sri Lankan hotel, a suicide bomber drove an explosive-laden truck
into a nearby building, killing at least 70 people and injuring more
than 2,000. Cooper dutifully reports the incident, then returns to the
much more peaceful moment when the Twains disembarked in the same country
a century before. One wonders what Twain would have said in the face
of a suicide bombing, the sort of event that distinguishes contemporary
from Victorian travel. South Africa was Twains last stop on the tour;
he arrived at a time when the Boer War was just around the corner. He
had a chance to intervene politically when a number of men, including
Americans, were imprisoned for taking part in an anti-Boer uprising
encouraged by Cecil Rhodes. Twain met with Transvaal president Paul
Kruger, and relished his political role enough to consider becoming
U.S. consul in Johannesburg, an idea which his wife quickly vetoed.
When he ended his tour and left South Africa, he told readers, I seemed
to have been lecturing a thousand years. Cooper leaves us with a picture of Twain in the twilight
of his career. The tour and the resulting book were a success; Twain
was able to pay off debts incurred by his notorious investment in a
failed typesetting machine which had relieved him of a sum that in todays
dollars would equal more than $1,280,000. He returned to New York with
his family and was welcomed as a hero, but the earlier death of his
daughter Suzie had burdened him with grief, and his beloved Olivia was
to die a few years later. As Cooper acknowledges sadly, Following
the Equator was Twains last major book. This study makes one want
to revisit it.

Dr. David Espey directs
the English Writing Program at Penn. He will be spending the 2000-01
academic year in Japan as a Fulbright lecturer.

BRIEFLY
NOTED

A selection of recent
books by alumni and faculty, or otherwise of interest to the University
community. Descriptions are compiled from information supplied by the
authors and publishers.

Over its 175-year history, Thomas Jefferson University
has received hundreds of paintings, sculptures, art works on paper,
antique decorative arts, and richly illustrated, rare medical texts.
Many have connections with nationally famous physicians of the 19th
century. The university established a special gallery for three major
portraits of faculty members by Thomas Eakins. Adorn the Halls
is the culmination of a decade-long project to analyze and present the
Jefferson collection. Berkowitz has served as Jeffersons art historian
since 1988.

When Louis I. Kahn received the commission for
the Trenton Jewish Community Center in 1954, he was a revered teacher
of architecture who had built public housing projects and a few private
homes. The Trenton project demanded an innovative interpretation and
Kahn responded with his first mature work and some of the most haunting
buildings of his career. This is the first work to fully examine Kahns
built and unbuilt Trenton plans. Solomon is an independent curator;
she adapted this book from her dissertation: Secular and Spiritual
Humanism: Louis I. Kahns Work for the Jewish Community in the 1950s
and 1960s.

Mutant-mouse models are a powerful new tool to
investigate the functions of genes and to develop treatments for genetic
disorders. This introductory textbook analyzes mouse behaviors in targeted
gene-mutation models of human genetic diseases, taking the reader through
a three-tiered strategy for behavioral phenotyping that avoids a host
of potential pitfalls. Experimental designs to minimize false positives
and negatives are intensively described. Dr. Jacqueline (Lerner) Crawley
is chief of behavioral neuropharmacology at the National Institute of
Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland. Her laboratory conducts research
on neuropeptides mediating normal behaviors and implicated in human
diseases, including Alzheimers, obesity, schizophrenia and anxiety
disorders. She is also the U.S. editor of the journal Neuropeptides
and president of the International Behavioral Neuroscience Society.

ON THE ROAD OF THE WINDS:
An Archaeological History of the Pacific
Islands Before European ContactBy Patrick Vinton Kirch C71.Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press,
2000. 424 pp., $45.00.Order
this book

The Pacific Ocean covers one-third of the earths
surface and encompasses many thousands of islands, the home to numerous
societies and cultures. Among these indigenous Oceanic cultures are
the intrepid Polynesian double-hulled canoe navigators, the atoll dwellers
of Micronesia, the statue-carvers of remote Easter Island and the famed
traders of Melanesia. Recent archaeological excavations, combined with
allied research in historical linguistics, biological anthropology and
comparative ethnography, have begun to reveal much new information about
the long-term human history of the Pacific Islands. This book synthesizes
the grand sweep of history there, beginning with the movement of early
people out from Asia more than 40,000 years ago. Kirch is an anthropology
professor at the University of California-Berkeley and the author of
seven books.

Munoz, a professor of sociology at Swarthmore
College, leaves behind the conventions of literary analysis to delve
into the mysterious world of a living legend. He digs into the psychocultural
core that has brought Vargas Llosa to his current standing as a Latin
American intellectual leader. In so doing, he introduces unique understandings
of Vargas Llosas identity as an embattled Mestizo Man, a truncated
Lawgiver and a Storyteller. He also engages the debate concerning the
role of the writer in Latin America, the merits and shortcomings of
modernist and postmodernist thought, and the differences between neo-liberalism
and alternative democratic positions.

CAN WE WEAR OUR PEARLS AND STILL BE FEMINISTS?:
Memoirs of a Campus StruggleBy Joan D. Mandle CW66.Columbia, Mo.: University of Missouri Press, 2000.
280 pp., $19.95.Order
this book

When Joan Mandle accepted the position of director
of womens studies at Colgate University, she had specific goals in
mindto make the program stronger, more academically rigorous and publicly
open. The program would resist becoming the captive of identity politics
and refuse being marginalized on campus by appealing to and challenging
all students and faculty interested in gender issues and social change.
Just as she anticipated, she faced obstacles during this transformation.
Among her critics were feminist students and faculty whose views of
a successful program directly contradicted her own. While she set forth
a policy of inclusiveness, they sought to maintain an exclusive community.
Through her examination of the battles involved in creating an academically
significant and ideologically open program, Mandles memoir provides
insight into a possible avenue of change for feminism. Mandle is currently
associate professor of sociology at Colgate.

This book offers an insiders story on how, after
the failure of Walter Mondales campaign, a group of New Democrats successfully
reformed their enfeebled partys agenda, moved it toward the center
and
recaptured the White House. Using interviews as well as archives and
personal papers, Baer examines the role of the Democratic Leadership
Council from its founding in 1985 through President Clintons second
term in office. He takes readers behind the scenes in Little Rock to
tell how DLC director Al From encouraged Clintons run for White House.
He then explains how the DLC shaped the partys agenda into a Third
Way that embraced positions such as welfare reform, a balanced budget,
free trade, a tough stance on crime and a strong defense.

Did you know the components of a good relationship
when you were 20? Neither does college junior and former hoopster Tony
Norris, but that doesnt stop him from trying. A good-looking man with
a gift for gab, Tony puts as much time into his studies of women as
he does his courses. The problem is his grades are higher in his classes
than in his relationships. He keeps falling for the wrong women and
overlooking the right one, whos under his nose. In the debut novel
of this author, described as a young, new voice in black commercial
fiction, Tonys amorous adventures play out against the backdrop of
his college years and the new responsibilities and experiences of coming
of age. Peterson is senior information-technology support specialist
for College House Computing. He also organized and has taught in a Saturday
academy for West Philadelphia students at DuBois College House.

TRAVELS WITH THE WOLF: A Story of Chronic IllnessBy Melissa Anne Goldstein C92 GGS95.Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 2000.
274 pp., $65.00 (cloth); $22.00 (paper).Order
this book

Narrated through poetry and prose, Travels
With the Wolf is an autobiographical account of Goldsteins experiences
with lupus. It is her story of becoming a young woman, writer and teacher
in the presence of a severe, often debilitating, disease. It is an exploration
of her relationships with her family and friends as the illness steals
into their lives, and the record of her struggle to maintain her independence
and identity despite disease. Goldstein uses her experiences as well
as sociological, literary and historical research to portray and understand
the dilemmas faced by chronically ill people in our society. She calls
for reform of todays health care system to better meet the needs of
the chronically ill.

PROPHECY AND DIPLOMACY: The Moral Doctrine
of John Paul IIEdited by John J. Conley C73 and Joseph Koterski.New York: Fordham University Press, 1999. 306 pp.,
$35.00 (cloth); $17.50 (paper).Order
this book

Since the beginning of his pontificate, John Paul
II has provoked the admiration and consternation of the world for his
positions on a range of subjects, from abortion to the workplace to
the ethical controversies behind political disputes. In this volume,
a group of 20 Jesuit scholars, representing a wide range of disciplines,
analyzes the Popes teaching on moral issues and assesses the merits
of the Popes theory from different political and theological standpoints.
Conley is a professor of philosophy at Fordham University.

When the handful of Polish-American businesswomen
in New Orleans choose Lana Pulaski as their candidate for district attorney,
she is gung-ho. Lana, a lawyer who favors billboard ads and keeps her
office shabby so as not to intimidate her unsophisticated clients, was
first in her law school class. She cannily hides her intellectual bent
under a huge, improbably red-orange hairdo, wears inch-thick makeup
and clothes that by some miracle do not burst apart on her bountiful
body. Her campaign becomes an unusual journey that includes her instant
wedding to an eightysomething Cajun judge of fine family and dubious
practices which she hopes will give her the local angle and touch of
class she desperately needs. This satire on Louisiana politics is Paolinis
debut novel.

Chris is overjoyed when his soccer team makes
it to the state championships. But when he and his teammates start hearing
strange and frightening rumors about their opponents, they wish they
hadnt gotten so far. Soccer has always come easily to Abbythat is
until her rival, Rebecca, turns Abbys own teammates against her. Her
confidence fading, Abby has trouble making the big plays and leading
the team to victory. But Abby hatches a surprising plan to turn the
tables on Rebecca and still unite the team. Drama, humor, mystery and
action comprise the seven stories featured in this book for young soccer
fans. And while theyre being entertained, readers will learn some valuable
lessons in sportsmanship. Herman is the author of 12 books and a Westport,
Connecticut, newspaper columnist who writes about kids, sports and life
in the suburbs. He coaches kids soccer each fall.

Wouldnt you like to spend time with 45 of the
top women in business to learn their secrets to success? What key attributes
help them to succeed? What risks do they take? Have they encountered
the glass ceiling? What tradeoffs have they made? Abrams, a visiting
scholar at Northwestern Universitys Kellogg Graduate School of Management,
has interviewed CEOs, presidents and senior partners at well-known companies
in a cross-section of industries and synthesized their experiences in
this book. Abrams has served as a consultant at the international management
consulting firm McKinsey & Company, an investment banker at Goldman
Sachs & Co., and a senior executive at Chicago Childrens Museum.

After 23 years working with patients seeking transsexual
surgery, Hubschman, the former director of Social Work at Pennsylvania
Hospital, has come to understand and appreciate the people who are in
this most central and difficult human condition. To better educate
the public, she has written this book, explaining in simple terms the
history and definition of transsexualism, along with standards for surgery,
and using patients first-person accounts. Hubschman is a social worker
who has been in private practice for 30 years doing primarily marriage
and family counseling.

BROADCASTING FREEDOM: Radio, War and the Politics
of RaceBy Barbara Dianne Savage, Faculty.Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina
Press, 1999. 416 pp., $45.00 (cloth); $18.06 (paper).Order
this book

This book examines the World War II-era treatment
of race as a national political issue. The author, an assistant professor
of history, provides evidence that the campaigns for racial justice
in the 1940s served as an essential precursor to the civil rights campaigns
of the 1950s and 1960s. The book won the 1999 Hoover Book Award, which
is presented by the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library to the best
scholarly book published on any aspect of American history during 1914-1964,
the years of President Hoovers public service.

JUST SEX: Students Rewrite the Rules on Sex,
Violence, Activism and EqualityEdited by Jodi Gold C98 and Susan Villari, Staff.Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000. 323
pp., $17.95.Order
this book

Influenced by three decades of feminism, men and
women are coming to college with different ideas and expectations about
sexual freedom and violence than did their parents. Since the early
1980s, a student movement has emerged from the
belief that sexual violence is neither inherent nor inevitable. This
book chronicles the movement to end all forms of sexual violence and
to mold a new sexual paradigm where explicitly consensual sex and sexual
autonomy are the norm. Gold
and Villari have compiled the writings of leading student activists
and young scholars. Gold, who was the student coordinator of the first
North American Conference on Sexual Violence, is pursuing a career in
child and adolescent psychiatry. Villari, the director of health education
at Penn, has worked in the womens health movement for 20 years and
has helped organize student educators and activists since 1989. Both
are founding members of Speakout: The North American Student Coalition
Against Sexual Violence and consult with universities nationwide.

Copyright 2000 The
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